The present invention relates to an automatic pasta-cooker allowing rapid and programmed preparation of portions of pasta and similar food.
It is known that in restaurants, spaghetti-houses and similar public commercial concerns there is a need to rapidly prepare a high number of pasta dishes in order to serve a high number of customers in a time as short as possible.
Automatic apparatuses for cooking pasta are already known. For example, patent EP 1401310 describes an automatic pasta-cooker comprising two cooking chambers, the first chamber being provided with a valve for feeding raw pasta and an underlying valve for discharging cooked pasta and the second cooking chamber being arranged under said discharge valve of the first chamber and being provided at the bottom with a shutter for discharging the cooked pasta. Each chamber is also provided with a vent valve for discharging vapor, and is connected with a pipe for feeding hot water provided by a boiler, with a piping for draining cooking water and with a piping for draining vapor. Said pipes terminate into a heat exchanger for pre-heating the mains water before feeding it to the boiler.
A drawback of said known apparatus consists in that, during the partial cooking carried out in the first chamber, the pasta can stick together thus forming lumps that do not break up even in the second chamber wherein a larger quantity of water is contained. For this reason, it may happen that the final product served to the client is not completely satisfactory for the presence in the dish of lumps of stuck pasta.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,361,682 describes an apparatus for the quick cooking of pasta with hot water at high pressure, comprising two cooking chambers which are substantially arranged side by side and are connected by means of a substantially horizontal junction pipe. The apparatus also comprises a boiler suitable for supplying the two chambers with hot water and a heat exchanger suitable for pre-heating water to be supplied to the boiler.
This apparatus also has the disadvantage that it does not comprise means for breaking-up the lumps of pasta, which unavoidably sticks at least partially together during the cooking in the first chamber. As a matter of fact it is known that, in order to save energy and to guarantee the best uniformity of cooking, it is important that the geometry of the first chamber is such that the pasta is tightly contained inside said chamber. However said condition favors the undesired effect of the pasta sticking.